Sidebar - Responding to harassment: 2/4/98

Responding to
harassment

Men or women at the School of
Medicine who feel they have been sexually harassed can take any of
several steps to deal with the problem.

Concerns about sexual harassment can
be brought informally to Martha McKee, the school's ombudsperson
(498-5744), or to one of Stanford's 35 sexual harassment advisers.
Issues of sexual harassment at the School of Medicine fall under
the university-wide sexual harassment policy that was formally
adopted in 1993. The policy statement is available from the
school's Office of Student Affairs and Office of Employee
Relations, as well as from the ombudsperson's office.

Another resource for anyone with
concerns about sexual harassment is Lorraine Zappert, the
university's sexual harassment policy officer, at 723-1583
orharass@leland.

In her Jan. 23 presentation to
faculty and students, Dr. Bernice Sandler of the National
Association for Women in Education also offered several suggestions
for handling such situations:

* To call attention to the
offensiveness of a comment, Sandler said, you can use the "Miss
Manners" approach and say, "I beg your pardon" or "I can't believe
you actually said that."

* You can use humor and playfulness
with a response such as, "Is this a test to see how I handle sexual
harassment?"

* You can pull out a clearly labeled
"SEXUAL HARASSMENT NOTEBOOK" and say, "Could you say that again?
I'm writing a book [or doing a research project] on sexual
harassment, and I want to write that down."

* You can send a private letter to
the person with a factual description of what occurred, your
feelings about what happened and how you would like to see things
change. The letter should be sent by certified mail, with no copies
to anyone else, Sandler said. More than 90 percent of the time,
this face-saving approach succeeds in causing the person to change
his or her behavior, she said.